


Head Canons and Musings

by SpaceMatriarchy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drug Addiction, F/F, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8737870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceMatriarchy/pseuds/SpaceMatriarchy
Summary: A series of fully formed Supernatural stories, cross posted from Tumblr, in a less comprehensive style. Each story contains a plot, details, etc, or a more in-depth exploration of an element, but not detail to the point of including all dialogue, unnecessary description, etc. Kind of like treatments instead of finalized pieces."Art and Lutherie" - Dean gets a guitar"To Change" - Endverse Castiel/Dean Smith, au where Dean Smith is himself, but Cas is still a fallen angel"Capital P Pride" - Bunker Family goes to Pride"Undeclared" - Claire gets a girlfriend





	1. Art and Lutherie

Dean definitely gave up guitar for a long time after Sonny’s and Robin. He might get a chance to fiddle around with one every so often, but he wouldn’t sit down and practice again for years.

The fact is, as massive as Impalas were in those days, it’s only so much space for what would sooner than later be two adult men and a terrifyingly tall teenage boy, everything they own, and a goddamn arsenal. Even if Dean had the cash to make a big purchase for himself, and he did not, there wasn’t room for a guitar on the road. By the time Baby is Dean’s, it’s slipped his mind.

But then they get the bunker, right? And Dean is nesting. And maybe he doesn’t ever think too hard about getting back into an instrument he played for maybe three months when he was sixteen, okay, but if he ever does think about it, he has the space for it. He wouldn’t have to lug it around the country. But he doesn’t think about it.

Then he goes back to Sonny’s and holy shit, as always, Dean’s going through a lot at that point. He’s remembering the things he gave up for the life, and the life has not been treating him well, lately. Sam’s possessed, Cas’ life is just fucked up, and if I may indulge in some ship speculation, he’s just left Cas behind to protect Sam, and he goes straight into reuniting with the girl he loved and left to stay with Sam.

Not much later, he’s sitting in a diner in a town he can’t remember the name of, and across the street is the world’s dingiest pawn shop, and if Sam doesn’t notice him looking across at the well loved little acoustic guitar in the window, the kid must be blind. And it’s a good thing Sam sees! Because Dean needs that little push, the ‘do you wanna go see what they’re asking for it?’ to let Dean know it’s okay to want something for just himself.

I imagine an Art and Lutherie Roadhouse, even though that might not make perfect sense, if only because I love this guitar and I think it suits him. It comes with a case and it lives in the corner of Dean’s room, by the desk, and he’s named it, but so help him God, he’s never telling anyone that he did.

And listen, this may be projecting a bit, but being able to make something, in the moment, all himself? To build a skill and improve and enjoy something? That must have meant the world to Dean over the very rough few years after that. When he’s out of control, when things are out of his control, when he’s feeling things he doesn’t want to feel, music is an outlet like he’s never had. We know he listens to music when he gets upset, why not play it?

Dean teaches himself with internet tutorial videos. Sam hears him often, but he doesn’t interrupt, because he knows Dean doesn’t feel good about people listening to him play. Sam and Cas are literally the only two people in the world who have heard him play guitar since Sonny’s, and most of the time it’s from the other room, or pretending not to pay attention.  
Sometimes Dean wants them to hear, though. He doesn’t say it, he just sits in the library, fiddling with it fake-casual until a tune comes about, and Sam and Cas are quiet and listening without making Dean feel scrutinized.

Dean is good, considering. And sometimes it revs up and Dean and Sam get singing and laughing and they aren’t that fucking good at that, and the music isn’t what makes them a family, but the Winchesters drunk shouting a terrible rendition of ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ with enough love and enthusiasm to get a real laugh out of Cas, that sure lets the warmth of family shine through.


	2. To Change

concept: dean smith/endverse cas but it’s not ‘human au cas who smokes pot’ it’s actually endverse cas with all the cynicism and resentment and who is actually a fallen angel

Dean Smith doesn’t have time for a relationship right now, and as far as the guys at work are concerned, he’s a modern kind of guy who can embrace his feminine side, but that doesn’t make him gay. Women tend to want more than a one night stand and Dean feels so awkward around attractive men. And not dating means rarely drinking, which is better for his diets anyway.

But one beer with the bosses to celebrate closing a big deal ends in Dean subtly ditching the business talk and going home with some guy perceptive enough to notice Dean glancing his way from across the room and confident enough to approach him at the bar looking for a free drink and maybe a phone number.

This works out great. The sex is great, and they hook up again and again until it’s not so much hooking up as the continuation of an established friends with benefits relationship. They get along well enough to watch TV and have dinner together and their set up doesn’t just fulfill a sexual need, but fights off some of the crushing loneliness of city life. Dean doesn’t expect Cas to change for him, and Cas understands full well that his decided male self, his tattoos, his attitude, and the permanent faint whiff of pot smoke that Dean’s cologne doesn’t quite cover up, are not going to be Dean’s plus one to the Sandover Christmas party.

The hippie spiritualism is fine, until Cas starts painting whatever symbols he’s got tattooed across his ribs onto the bottom of Dean’s rugs, and the inside of his door frames. Until Cas starts asking Dean to get inked up, too, with some spell, and with a kind of desperation like he actually believes Dean’s in immediate danger of demonic possession.

The drugs are fine, until Cas loses his convenience store job and moves in with Dean, and it becomes clear that it wasn’t so much that Cas had a hold on his relationship with drugs and alcohol, but that he never came over when fucked up enough or strung out enough that Dean would worry. Never showed Dean the bottle of prescription painkillers he kept in his bathroom.

Cas doesn’t always come home at night, and Dean doesn’t always know where he is. Which is fine, except that Dean starts to worry more and more. One night Cas comes home and slides into bed, waking Dean up at damn near four in the morning, and won’t tell Dean where he’s been. Dean wouldn’t push the issue if he hadn’t turned on the light and seen that Cas was bleeding through a bandage wrapped around his ribs.

He tells Dean that he was once something else. Something bigger, and older. That the scarred symbol on his chest is not another body modification, but the burnt remnants of the spell that destroyed his grace and trapped him here on Earth. That he had enemies, stronger than any human, and that they are out to hurt him. That he had family, stronger than any of his enemies, and that they are out to hurt him. That if Dean would just please, get the tattoos, and wear the amulets, and let him ward the apartment fully, they could both be safe.

He rescinds all of this in the morning, when he’s sober. He never gives Dean any other explanation for the stab wound.

Dean starts bringing Cas brochures on rehab facilities, the kinds of places Cas would never be able to afford, but Dean absolutely could, and they start fighting about it. Cas doesn’t want to stop, can’t understand why Dean can’t understand how cold and hollow he feels and how alone, cut off from his family. Dean will never be able to understand, because the pain Cas has been through don’t exist on a human scale. Cas can’t let Dean spend this much time and effort and money on him. Cas doesn’t understand that this has become so much more than what it started out as.

They start making compromises. Cas drops hallucinogens and Dean takes a week off work to help him start to kick opioids. Dean gets the tattoo. They leave the TV on in the next room at night so the silence isn’t too much. Castiel’s chest still aches in the night, but he can roll over towards Dean and be wrapped up in his warmth, and rest a bit more peacefully.

The angels will come for him again, but Cas doesn’t have to fight them alone.


	3. Capital "P" Pride

Please imagine Bunker Family going to pride.

Please imagine Claire being like ‘hey i’m gonna take the bus to topeka this weekend bye’ and refusing to allow any of the adults to drive her and they interrogate her until she finally admits she wants to go to pride.

And nobody understands why she wanted to keep it a secret? (Dean and Cas are a thing and best-aunt-ever Charlie has that sexy Princess Leia tattoo and Claire has been out for months and nobody’s passed any judgement before now) And Claire admits she really didn’t want it to become a dorky family thing because she really just wanted to go to a party and hang out with lgbt folks her own age.

Admitting to this is worse, because Dean goes full Dad Mode and insists on it being a dorky family thing. Everybody get in the car, we are going to be supportive and be in a parade, and oh god, what have I done? He realizes ten minutes into the drive that this is a mistake. As soon as he starts thinking of it as ‘going to a gay pride parade’ rather than just trying to be a supportive not-quite-step-dad, he suddenly realizes this is not going to be fun for him. Dean doesn’t have an ounce of pride in his body. Charlie’s duffel is stuffed with more novelty cunnilingus pun t-shirts than he could have imagined even existed. By the time they get on route 81 he’s gleaned from listening to the conversation that somebody brought face paint. This is going to be the worst weekend of Dean Winchester’s life

But then they stop to pick up snacks at a drug store in Junction City and Cas brings Claire’s attention to the temporary hair dyes and Dean is the one who ends up helping her dye blue and pink and purple streaks into her hair in the motel sink (Cas offered but according to Claire “Dean at least looks like he might have had a punk phase”).

It’s in the way Cas accepts the streaks of white and black and purple face paint Claire draws across his cheek the morning of the parade like a blessing. Like her wanting him there, her wanting to be part of their family, is the greatest gift he’s ever been given. It’s in the way Sam hovers, wanting to be there but not wanting to impose on this part of them and their lives that he knows he is only able to observe, and the way Charlie winds herself up in excitement on Claire’s behalf until it infects the rest of them.

And when Claire wanders off in the evening to get pizza with some kids her own age from a local youth support group, and the four adults are sitting in a diner booth, and nobody has said a word about Dean having embarrassedly wiped off his face paint with a napkin, it’s in the way that after this weird and, for Dean, at least, uncomfortable day, none of them can stop smiling.

It’s love, he realizes. Not one of them came for anything but that. Stepping out like this to support Claire is something he would do for any one of them, and that he knows they would do for him.

Dean Winchester still doesn’t have an ounce of Capital P Pride in his body. There’s too much internalized bullshit in him for that. But when he can’t be proud of his bisexual self, he can be proud of his bisexual not-quite-step-daughter, and know his family is proud of him, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece does not accurately represent my headcanons as they are now but that's not really the point.


	4. Undeclared

Imagine Claire Novak finally starts going to college classes as an undeclared major to appease Jodie, and takes classes she thinks will be useful in hunting later on.

Theology, mythology, she joins a sports club, and of course, she studies Latin.

But Latin is hard, and she’s struggling, and the girl who sits beside her in class has to let Claire copy her notes after every lecture. So they start getting lunch or coffee after every lecture. So they become friends.

They talk. This girl confesses to Claire that she likes girls. Claire confesses nothing, because the whole ‘severely damaged upbringing’ thing and the ‘sure knowledge from a young age that angels and god and heaven are a thing’ thing really mess with the whole ‘realizing you’re gay and deciding whether or not to shove those feelings back into the closet and never deal with them’ thing.

She’s asked Dean about it (”for a friend” of course) who swears he’s had to conversation with Cas, and can confirm from the source that sexual orientation has no influence whatsoever on Saint Peter and his judgement. But Claire stays quiet anyway, because it’s not exactly the smallest town on the map, but Sioux Falls ain’t exactly San Francisco, either.

Claire does not spill the beans on the monsters and angels and magic thing. She tells the girl that her dad left due to mental illness, which is the official story anyway, and that her mom died doing something mundane and normal. She tells the girl she’s just got a thing for the occult, which is why she’s got those pentagrams painted on the floor under the carpets, why she has so many books on old gods and devil worship.

There are rumors of an underground tunnel on campus, built to let students cross between buildings in winter without freezing to death, bricked off when one too many muggings and assaults proved it more dangerous than braving the cold. There’s rumours somebody’s found it. There’s rumors of a ghost, because college kids will believe anything.

Claire’s friend asks her if she has a spirit board, wants to look into the haunting since Claire is ‘into that kind of junk’. She says maybe next weekend, and has Jodie’s backup and salt rounds locked and loaded by Wednesday.

Which would have been great if this girl hadn’t spotted them heading towards the tunnel entrance from across the quad and chased after.

I won’t try and write a fight scene, even in this little detail, but the ghost gets identified as a young woman killed in that tunnel, the last victim before the school finally bowed to pressure and closed it off. The spirit never meant to hurt any of the women who trespassed there, just shove them out, keep them away. And Claire’s friend gets shoved. Hard. She hits her head on the concrete, and before she falls unconscious, she swears she sees Claire Novak shooting a hazy apparition with a shotgun.

Claire answers all her questions honestly at the hospital when she wakes up. Jodie leaves them there to go take care of the salt and burn, while they talk in hushed tones about the dark corners of the world that the girl just can’t believe Claire was right about.

“You saved me,” She says.

“I don’t think she wanted to hurt any of us,” Claire says. “I just blasted her away to give us enough time to get you out of there.”

“Would you let me blame it on the concussion if I said I’m totally falling in love with you?”

Claire blushes, reaches out, and takes the girl’s hand where it rests on the hospital bed.


End file.
